I originally got this idea from the Hello! Cupcake book and whilst the colours that were used for the chocolate butterflies in the book were pretty, it was a bit too Halloween for me with the orange and the black. So, I used black and pink to add a more girly and summery feel to the cupcakes. I used a standard vanilla cupcake, with a traditional pink vanilla butter cream.
To make the butterflies:
1. Make your cupcakes and then leave to cool on a tray.
2. Melt the white chocolate and dark chocolate in separate bowls, above a boiling pan of water, adding three drops of vanilla extract to each and pink colouring to the white chocolate. When completely melted take off the boil and put on the side. Wait 10 minutes for the chocolate to cool before placing into piping bags.
3. Whilst the chocolate is cooling, cut out enough grease proof paper to cover two baking trays and tape the remaining paper on the underside of the tray. Then draw with a pencil, the shape of your butterfly. Make sure that you space the drawings fairly far apart from each other so that when you are icing it doesn't stick together.
4. Place the chocolate into separate piping bags and make a small incision at the end of the bag for the chocolate to come through with a pair of scissors. You do not need a nozzle for this. Follow your designs on the paper using the dark on the outline and the pink in the middle, add any sprinkles to the wings and then place in the fridge.
5. Whilst the butterflies are in the fridge make your vanilla butter cream and pipe on to your cupcakes using a nozzled piping bag. Then take the butterflies out of the fridge and place on top of the butter cream icing.
NB: make sure you do all of this in a cool ish room, you don't want the chocolate or the butter cream to melt, not even slightly because this means it will be more difficult for the butterflies to sit on the cupcake.
I hope that if you make these that they are successful, they always add something different to your cupcakes for a party, afternoon tea or even if you just feel like making them. You can also use these instructions to make letters, dinosaurs and insects to stick on top of your cupcakes.
ENJOY :)
